Thomas J O'Neill was an Irish-born American merchant and philanthropist. He was one of eight children of John and Anne Lynch O'Neill of County Cavan in north central Ireland. He died on April 6, 1919 of a sudden heart ailment in Baltimore, Maryland at age 69. O’Neill arrived in Baltimore from Ireland at age 16 in 1866 “with only pennies in his pocket.” Immediately, he hired himself out as an apprentice in a downtown linen shop.
In 1882, he went into a brief partnership to establish his own dry goods store. Its twenty-foot front was located at Charles and Lexington Streets. Buying out his partner, O'Neill was soon in full command of his promising enterprise. His fortunes grew as his store eventually absorbed three adjacent buildings and expanded to branches in Dublin, London, and Paris, providing a livelihood for more than 500 employees.
On Sunday morning, Feb. 7, 1904, what later became known as the Great Baltimore Fire began in the dry goods firm of John E. Hurst & Co., located on the south side of Redwood Street between Hopkins Place and Liberty Street at the current site of the Royal Farms Arena. The first alarm was turned in at 10:20 a.m. but the blaze was out of control within minutes, fanned by a wind that pushed the fire east by northeast in the direction of O’Neill & Co, which was about 400 yards away. By afternoon, most of the buildings south of the department store in the block bounded by Hopkins Place and Redwood, Fayette and Charles streets had been destroyed. Meeting in the offices of Mayor Robert McLane, city engineers recommended dynamiting buildings in the path of the blaze so there would be nothing left to burn—the demolished lots would create an artificial firebreak that would stop the conflagration in its tracks. By 5 p.m., blasting had begun, bringing down J. W. Putts department store on the southwest corner of Charles and Fayette streets. The next large building slated for demolition was on the northwest corner of Charles and Lexington—O'Neill's department store. When firefighters rushed into the store to plant their charges, O’Neill reportedly told them, “Gentlemen, you'll have to blow me up, too!"
A devout Catholic, O'Neill had just rushed back from the Carmelite Convent on Biddle Street in east Baltimore, where he had gone to beg the nuns—including his sister—to pray for the safety of his store. At the same time, his workers stopped up exterior downspouts and drains, then flooded the roof with water from the building's rooftop water tank. Despite these efforts, the flames reached the exterior walls of the department store's southernmost building, igniting a portion of the cornice and then part of the roof. At its peak, the temperature of the fire was estimated at 2500 degrees; buildings new and old in its path succumbed quickly to the flames By the time it was brought under control the following day, the fire had destroyed much of central Baltimore, including over 1,500 buildings covering an area of some 140 acres But it is a matter of historical record that on his return from the convent—and after the confrontation with the would-be dynamiters—the wind suddenly shifted. The fire turned south and east, and the store was saved. O’Neill believed that prayer saved his store when waves of flame threatened.
Closing of O’Neill’s
O'Neil's closed in 1954, in part because of the coming of the new Charles Center redevelopment and partly because the company could not renegotiate the leases on the four properties it occupied. "When O'Neill died in 1918, his will included a $5 million bequest to build a new cathedral to replace Benjamin Latrobe's Basilica of the Assumption, along with funds to Loyola University Maryland to build a church and monies to construct a hospital. O’Neill’s legacy: A new cathedral and a hospital After his death in 1919, O’Neill bequeathed $5 million to Cardinal James Gibbons and his successors to be used “as a nucleus for, and for the erecting of, a Catholic Church in the City of Baltimore.” The merchant had stipulated that the money was not to be used until after the death of his wife, Roberta. Although she died in 1936, the Great Depression and World War II delayed progress on the building and over time the original bequest to the cardinal had grown to $14 million. The sum was divided into $9 million for the new cathedral and adjacent buildings, and $5 million for a postgraduate hospital. Ultimately, the construction of the Cathedral of Mary our Queen, completed in 1959, used $8.5 million of that legacy.
O'Neill's gift of a cathedral as bequeathed in his will
“... All the balance of my estate unto Most Reverend James Gibbons, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Baltimorefor the time being, and his successors in the Archiepiscopal See of Baltimore, according to the discipline and government of the Roman Catholic Church, a Corporation Sole, as a nucleus for, and for the erecting of, a Cathedral Church in the City of Baltimore.... In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and affixed my seal, and placing my signature on the margin of the four pages hereof this 10th day Of July A.D. 1912. -THOMAS O'NEILL” "It is the only cathedral in the 2,000 year history of the Church that was donated by a single individual"
